PSOL rejects alliance with Dino in Maranhão.

Maranhão 247 - Luís Antônio Pedrosa, a lawyer and pre-candidate for governor of Maranhão from the PSOL party, explains why he supports the party's own candidacy for the Palácio dos Leões (Governor's Palace). Check it out:

Hot Friday: Luis Antônio Pedrosa

In the first interview of the column Hot Friday from 2014, the Robert Lobato's Blog We are pleased to welcome the democratic participation of lawyer, political and social activist, and prominent human rights activist Luis Antônio Pedrosa.

Pedrosa offers an interesting, democratic analysis, demonstrating a rare combination of technical and political knowledge, regarding the crisis facing the state of Maranhão in the areas of public security and the prison system.

In the interview, the lawyer also discusses agrarian and land conflicts in Maranhão, advances and challenges in the area of ​​human rights, the role of the OAB-MA (Brazilian Bar Association of Maranhão), and the responsibilities of the Federal Government regarding security.

Luis Antônio Pedrosa, pre-candidate for governor for the PSOL party, outlined his main campaign platforms and revealed which parties he intends to face in the elections this October.

He also commented on the political, programmatic, and pragmatic similarities he sees between candidates Flávio Dino (PCdoB) and Luis Fernando (PMDB).

The full interview follows.

"It is difficult to implement any serious and effective change project with the group led by the PCdoB, which includes well-known political figures from the state's political life."

PEDROSA BY HIMSELF

I am a human rights activist and lawyer by profession. I was active in the student movement, served as coordinator of the academic board of the Law course, student representative on the collegiate body, and director of the Central Student Directory of UFMA (Federal University of Maranhão). I was a member of the Workers' Party until the 2010 crisis, when a formal coalition with the PMDB (of the Sarney Group) was imposed. From then on, I sought to contribute to the strengthening of another political field, where I am currently, because I defend party discipline and understand that the PT and the Sarney Group are now inseparable.

YOUTH

I am the son of civil servants, and due to my parents' work, I lived in several municipalities in the interior of the state. I interacted with people from different regions and witnessed the suffering and strength of the people, from the Baixada Fluminense to the Gerais de Balsas. I saw the clashes between buffalo and fishermen and the devastation of the Cerrado by soybean plantations. I walked on foot, climbing and descending slopes, harvesting seasonal fruits like cashew, pequi, and bacuri, and sometimes the delicious macaúba. I bathed in the rivers, streams, and waterfalls of the south of the state, like any mischievous boy from the interior. I confess I gave my mother a hard time. I mingled with fishermen, swam in the Farinha and Maravilha rivers. Even as a very young child, I swam across the dangerous currents of the Balsas River. I lived alongside fishermen, gatherers, and hunters, listening to their stories, often alongside my father. In the markets of the interior, I witnessed abundance followed by famine, brought about by large development projects. I saw, in the comments of rural workers, the fateful disappearance of the curassow, the guan, and the seriema in the Cerrado. The abrupt decline in the population of jacanas, moorhens, and ducks in the flooded fields. I saw the river floods, the droughts, the mudflats on the roads, the rain on the thatched roof, the canoe navigating through the mudflats. All this as fleeting impressions that marked my youth and constitute my identity as a Maranhense. Later, converted from isolation, I became a diligent student, immersed in books, but without disliking the reality of my state, from which I have never left and where I intend to end my days. From an early age, I enjoyed literature, poetry, and history, and, until the eve of the university entrance exam, I was unsure which profession to pursue. My history studies, while still at Marist high school, brought me closer to Marx [German philosopher and activist Karl Marx] and liberation theology, and later to the student movement and human rights activism.

The choice for the law

I chose law school because of my ever-present need to influence the reality around me. I understand that studying law is very different from choosing to practice law. Even in the early semesters of my law degree, I interned at the Maranhão Society for Human Rights, coming into contact with the agrarian reality of the state. I received my training in the context of popular legal aid, with a strong Marxist bias, training popular agents, with activism for human rights as a reference point. I simply realized I was a lawyer in the intensity of the days and years, traveling through the interior districts, defending communities threatened or victims of forced evictions, squatters, landless peasants, quilombola communities, fishermen, extractivists… Contact with this reality rekindled old childhood ties, reworking a new understanding of scenarios, with the need for their transformation, based on a critical view of law and society.

"I thought that Décio's death could represent an important milestone for a true ethical shift in the activities of a handful of journalists."

THE MEETING WITH THE INTERNATIONAL

The student movement established a bridge with human rights activism, and human rights activism established a bridge with politics. I have never been a candidate nor have I sought a leadership position in political parties. My politics have always been about promoting citizenship and ensuring that people have their rights respected. I have never sympathized with senseless power struggles. For me, a horizon of peace and solidarity is always necessary, and that is how I envision the new politics, as a space for the action of good citizens, where the exercise of truth is a condition for the exchange of refined reflections on the reality that one wants to change.

 The Rural Question in MA

For the fourth consecutive year, we are the state with the highest number of land conflicts. Land conflict means violence, social exclusion, forced evictions, people without homes and land to cultivate. Agrarian reform has ceased to be a banner for the left-wing political field that took power at the federal level. With each passing year, the federal government's performance dwindles in terms of expropriations. 2012 was already the worst year for agrarian reform in the country's history. Well, in 2013, the Dilma government managed to make it even worse. According to the CPT (Pastoral Land Commission), at this rate, Brazil will need another forty years to eliminate the backlog of families living in encampments. And I say that this calculation does not include the so-called traditional peoples and communities, such as landholders, quilombola communities, riverside dwellers, and extractivists.

Even in the field of agricultural credit, there is very unequal treatment in relation to family farming, which receives (via Pronaf) only 27.5% of rural credit during the PT decade, while agribusiness has 72.5%. Dilma stated that it was necessary to structure the settlements first, but in Maranhão, they went the entire year without technical assistance, hampered by the bureaucracy of Incra. It is already quite clear that in the PT-PMDB coalition, agribusiness continues to be the main interlocutor.

In fact, rural workers continue to rely on the Bolsa Família-Social Security system, two resources that are still the most efficient for supporting the rural population in Maranhão. This is tragic because it doesn't point to a cultural shift towards emancipating and integrating the state's active population into the labor market. We are the state with the highest number of Bolsa Família beneficiaries (slightly more than half the population), but this doesn't prevent us from having the worst social indicators.

Despite the profound transformation in the countryside of Maranhão, especially in the last two decades (where we have practically reversed the rural population vs. urban population ratios), we continue to be the enigmatic state of a resistant peasantry, which constitutes about 1/3 of the economically active population of Maranhão.

HUMAN RIGHTS IN MA

It is impossible to celebrate the achievement of human rights in a state engulfed in an unprecedented social and political crisis. Social indicators, in their various aspects, suggest that the state's political class has failed. There are no signs of good governance, and the two main paradigms are immersed in the same reference point, which is heading towards the abyss. The current public security crisis is merely the tip of the iceberg, its base slumbering at the bottom of a dark ocean of inertia, omission, patrimonialism, and unpreparedness for public administration. species The ideological aspect is merely the appetizer for the political comedy that has been established, driven by the desperation of economic interests seeking to seize control of the State, the most significant example of which is the presence of loan sharks in the financing of the campaigns of the two main groups in contention.

When we talk about advances in human rights in Maranhão, we have to refer to a new level of struggle and organization of the people to claim rights and protest against injustices, where the June uprisings were added to the peasant, indigenous, and student mobilizations.

"The shortage of prison spaces was exacerbated by the presence of criminal organizations, a result of the new territorial expansion of gangs from the south and southeast, seeking new criminal frontiers."

OAB-MA

The current administration of the OAB-MA (Brazilian Bar Association of Maranhão) represents a political and managerial advancement. It is a space shared by many political views and many profiles within the legal profession, where concern for civic struggles has prevailed. The population has sought us out precisely because of this potential of the entity to formulate legal and political demands in the gap left by the actions of other institutions. I believe that we have enriched the current political landscape and have strived to aggregate and combine efforts to make the OAB-MA a space for the realization of citizenship for the people of Maranhão, not just for the defense of the prerogatives of lawyers.

"GRADUATED GORILLAS"

There was, in fact, a false controversy. A segment of journalism, linked to the oligarchy, tried to frame the expression as being directed at all journalists, at a time when Senator José Sarney had written an article attributing to the deceased journalist [I don't know why, but it seems Pedrosa doesn't like to say or write the name Décio Sá] the title of "defender of democracy." I opposed this because I have historically fought against the segment of the media that normalizes human rights violations and makes truth a product of the political market, according to the conveniences of each faction. Equally and intensely, I fight against unethical lawyers and against any segment of the social or legal sphere that violates human rights. Therefore, this is not a war against journalism or against communication professionals, especially since I have a good relationship with the vast majority of professionals in this area and I understand that the media has an important emancipatory role. For this very reason, at the beginning of the movement, I advocated for community radio stations and I defend the democratization of the media.

During the course of the investigation [into the murder of journalist Décio Sá], many people understood the reason for the controversy and its implications for journalism in the state, especially for the activities of so-called bloggers, who are not always journalists. On the other hand, under the pretext of defending Décio's memory [oops, he mentioned the deceased's name], there was actually a need to affirm a journalistic practice that I consider questionable. Initially, I even thought that his death could represent an important milestone for a true ethical shift in the activities of a handful of these professionals in Maranhão, but the situation is becoming increasingly difficult.

The crisis in public security and in prisons.

Although some segments of the legal community resist a generalizing assessment, I affirm that the crisis also stems from a system whose web is woven from the high growth of the prison population in Brazil. We already have the fourth largest prison population in the world. It also has a foot in the selectivity of Brazilian Criminal Law, historically directed towards the poorest. Maranhão has struck a dangerous example, because it has deepened the crisis of the prison system with decades of mismanagement and disarticulation of the institutions of the criminal justice system. Five years ago, we had an incredible 70% of prisoners in pretrial detention. Today, despite having improved the rate, we are still among the seven states in the Federation with more pretrial detainees than convicted prisoners. Alongside this, we primarily incarcerate Black people, drug users, and the lower-level drug traffickers.

Alongside all of this, we have the failure of management, culminating in the current government. The shortage of prison spaces was aggravated by the presence of criminal organizations, a product of the new territorial expansion of gangs from the south and southeast, seeking new criminal frontiers and exporting inmates to federal maximum-security prisons. The fertile ground of the concentration of prisoners in São Luís, where inmates from the interior and the capital began to compete for power within the prisons, coupled with the endemic corruption of the system and the public security crisis, produced this gigantic snowball effect.

SOLUTIONS TO OVERCOME THE CRISIS

In the very short term, it is necessary to maintain surveillance in each of the prison corridors. To do this, it would be necessary to mobilize more people. The new prison units are still several months away. This means that the government could suffer further losses, along with the inmates.

The attacks against the security system appear likely to continue until the structural base of these gangs is definitively dismantled, something that could have been done with planning and strategy since 2010, when the structuring of these groups began to take shape.

The problem is that without sufficient personnel and with a weakened investigative police force, all of this is more difficult. The crisis challenges the training of monitors and a small number of demotivated prison officers, a segment of whom is mobilized by fierce opposition to the head of the department.

I imagine that in the medium term we will still see setbacks, with a federal intervention process, a complaint before the OAS, and even the possibility of federalizing the crimes, all coinciding with news of systematic killings.

"Luis Fernando has the landowners on his side; Flávio has the former president of the most violent organization of landowners against rural workers."

ROLE OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

Despite knowing that the country's prison population has increased by 380% in the last 20 years, and that we have the highest prison occupancy rate (172%) among emerging countries, the federal government has not opened a discussion to rethink prison policy. A policy of decarceration requires a new drug control policy, including possibilities for legalization, harm reduction, reforms to the legal system (approximately 80% of the prison population is involved in property crimes), the construction of small prison units, decentralized from large urban centers and closer to the families of inmates, and a new methodology for resocialization. The federal government preferred to do more of the same: build large prison units, train prison officers according to the doctrine of militarization, and promote interventions in prisons with the National Security Force.

THE ROSEANA SARNEY GOVERNMENT

I think there was a veiled resignation. There are no traces of governance, planning, coordination, synchronicity, or articulation of public policies. And we have visible signs of turbulence on the horizon. The crisis in public security and prisons will add to the protests against the World Cup, precisely in an election year. Currently, the prison massacres have broken through the traditional media blackout and reached world public opinion, revealing the inner workings of oligarchic domination. There is talk of intervention, but it is already underway, with the announcement of an emergency plan and a crisis management committee, recently announced by the Minister of Justice, José Eduardo Cardoso. There has been a soft intervention in the government of Maranhão.

Edivaldo Júnior Administration

I think he is still the main obstacle to Flávio Dino's candidacy. Edvaldo is repeating the same performance as João Castelo, with the added problem of having to ally himself with the former mayor now, after so many truculent attacks. A year is enough time for a mayor to show what he's capable of. He had the excuse of saying he found the city hall devastated, but now, working alongside Castelo, he can't even say that anymore. For someone at the beginning of their term, the crisis could herald a worse strangulation than the end of Castelo's administration. We have a crisis in health, a crisis in security (municipal guards), a crisis in public services, in education, and in urban mobility. The city remains potholed, ugly, poorly maintained, and without any prospect of improvement. The GPS, as expected, has become a bad joke.

FLÁVIO DINO VS. LUIS FERNANDO: DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES

When I say that Flávio Dino and Luis Fernando have more similarities than differences, it's based on the fundamental political field to which they both belong: the PT-PMDB field. Criticizing the Dilma government and its neo-developmentalist policies, ethical deviations, and patrimonialism also means criticizing Flávio Dino and Luis Fernando. At the federal level, they are together, sharing the same vision of government. This local division, therefore, is not programmatic; it's a simulacrum of dispute that will lead to the same thing, whoever wins, with only minor variations around a single theme. The main justification is the deposition of the Sarney group, but a good part of Flávio's allies came from that field, bringing their old political practices and even their political and biographical scandals. So, it's difficult to implement any serious and effective change project with the group led by the PCdoB, which includes well-known political figures from the state's political life. In reality, we are facing a proposal for change whose leadership is even more conservative than that of the Jackson period. And we know the difficulties the Jackson government faces in carrying out the transformations that the opposition electorate demands here in the state. When we say that they have more similarities than differences, just look at who surrounds each of them: Luis Fernando has Aluísio Mendes; Flávio Dino has Raimundo Cutrim, Roseana's former secretary. One has Madeira, the PSDB mayor of Imperatriz; the other seeks Castelo, the former PSDB mayor of São Luís. Luis Fernando has the large landowners on his side; Flávio has the former president of the most violent organization of landowners against rural workers, the UDR, which is Jorge Vieira [federal deputy Zé Vieira]. One has Roberto Costa, the other has Weverton Rocha, both former leaders of the discredited UMES, involved in the student ID card scandals… One has the loggers who devastate the Amazon rainforest in Maranhão, the other has a congressman who opposes the demarcation of indigenous lands and attacks the Gurupi Biological Reserve… Both are options for financing by companies involved in allegations of slave labor and by loan sharks, and so on. Regardless of each one's personal trajectory, their political projects reveal many identities and similarities.

The candidacy for governor

I emphasize that this is not a personal project. We are a political field that is not represented in the options presented by the current political landscape in Maranhão. We are an alternative that has decided to remake the political space of the left, with its historical political banners, more relevant than ever now. Due to my trajectory, my name has moved more easily among the various currents of the party, and we have achieved unprecedented internal unity. As I come from social movements, I lend my voice to PSOL to strengthen important struggles in the state, translating coherence between discourse and practice, something that does not occur among our likely adversaries.

MAIN FLAGS

First, affirming the possibilities of a new politics, using forms of direct democracy as a reference point, is ethical. This has implications and many concrete developments. It means directing the machinery of the State towards popular demands based on deliberate decisions in collective decision-making spaces. It is necessary to think about regionalized, democratic, and participatory planning. This precedes participatory budgeting, a banner that the PT (Workers' Party) abandoned. Then, implementing transparency, publicizing contracts, service orders, companies and service providers, the value of works, the number of appointed positions and their salaries, creating deliberative bodies, and the participation of organized civil society.

Secondly, create a guiding and cross-cutting axis for public policies across all departments. The Secretariat of Human Rights will no longer receive the traditional, dismissive treatment characteristic of governments led by the main competing groups. It will be responsible for monitoring participatory planning and budgeting, through dialogue with regional councils. The State Human Rights Plan will represent the formal commitment document of this guiding axis between government and society.

To set an example of austerity. To reduce unnecessary spending on luxury and ostentation. To review the salaries of top-level officials, to reduce the excessive number of appointed positions. To bring the State closer to social movements without co-opting their organizations, strengthening partnerships involving the promotion of rights and the restoration of citizenship, affirming the presence in the state sphere of qualified managers for this task, with a particularly technical and academic profile.

Invest heavily in education. Review teacher salary policies, restructure schools, bring practicality to school political-pedagogical projects, guarantee direct elections for principals, and make the school a space for coordinating various policies for youth and the school community. Secure a budget, to the maximum extent possible, to make this happen, reversing priorities.

“We do not incorporate any third-way discourse, based on religious fundamentalism and political conservatism. We will be the voice of the class-conscious left, deeply committed to anti-capitalist struggles.”

ARCH OF COVENANTS

Our political field is clearly defined. PSOL will seek the support of PCB and PSTU to form the main ticket, parties with which we intend to form a left-wing, Marxist, and eco-socialist front. An alliance composed of small parties with a rich ideological history: the PCB and the PSTU. We do not want alliances to guarantee TV time and then succumb to false campaign promises, hampered by the presence of allies with contradictory ideological profiles. If we want coherence between discourse and practice, we cannot share the stage with landowners accused of corruption and administrative misconduct, loan sharks, practitioners of torture, invaders of conservation units and indigenous lands, and gunmen.

Our core alliance will certainly be outside of institutionalized parties: students, landless peasants, quilombola communities, riverside dwellers, extractivists, indigenous people, squatters, victims of violence, unions, and social movements.

It may be utopian, but utopia should truly fuel any dream of societal transformation. It is from utopia that things change, because it allows us to move forward. As Galeano would say, utopia serves to keep us moving forward.

Defeating the Sarney group remains the historic challenge for the people of Maranhão. But this stage requires overcoming political practices, not just the names of individuals.

It would be better for the voter if these differences weren't obscured by illusionary political discourse. We defend agrarian reform, therefore we understand that we cannot have relations with the rural caucus or with the leaders of large landowners and agribusiness. Since we defend public campaign financing and reject financing from construction companies, large corporations, and the financial system, we cannot share the stage with loan sharks and their ilk. And we are using only a few examples among the visible contradictions of this political field.

MESSAGE TO READERS

I want to make it very clear that we will continue to fight for the construction of a programmatic left-wing field in the state. Our field is independent of the established polarization and will reject the plebiscite-like nature of the upcoming elections, just as we will do at the national level with the PT-PSDB alliance. However, we do not incorporate any third-way discourse based on religious fundamentalism and political conservatism. We will be the voice of the class-conscious left, deeply committed to anti-capitalist, anti-racist, and eco-socialist struggles. We will reaffirm the relevance of the traditional banners of the left in Brazil and the world, reaffirming the fight for gender equality, freedom of sexual orientation, religious ecumenism, secularism, agrarian reform, the titling of quilombos (settlements of escaped slaves), the demarcation of indigenous territories, and above all, coherence and ethics in politics. We will fight an unequal battle against major economic interests, we know that, but we will not abandon the principles that guide our paths as citizens of a state destroyed by an exclusionary model of politics and development. In this sense, I invite you to join us on this journey, with Randolfe Rodrigues, our presidential candidate, and with our comrades who are building a new politics every day, such as Jean Wyllys, Chico Alencar, Ivan Valente, and Luciana Genro. Come to PSOL.